Thursday, November 15, 2012

Mighty One Who Saves

The Lord Your God is
in your midst, a mighty One Who will save – Zephaniah 3:17a (ESV)

Two times within a
very short space of this prophecy to Judah during the reign of King Josiah, the
author uses language that speaks of the Lord, the King, our God, being in the
midst of His people. It is a crucial and important declaration. Not
only was it a message of hope for a people, Israel, who were being informed of
a coming exile (conquered by the Babylonians) that would conclude with an
exodus (partial restoration under the Persians), but it is also the present
reality of the covenant people of God, who dwell in a world in which Jesus has
been inaugurated as King and is at work in this world through the church, by
the Spirit, for saving, for healing, for renewal, and for restoration, as He
shares the eternal life of Resurrection power with those who demonstrate faith
through the confession of their belief in Him as Lord and King. In this
Kingdom of the Lord Jesus as the Christ, His covenant people, those who
recognize Him as their King, who carry out the covenant of that faith by living
according to that very Gospel message, and who conscientiously make disciples
that will also live out the covenant call to be a light to the world through sacrifice,
have been charged with and empowered to the service and expansion of the
dominion of that Kingdom through selfless acts of sacrificial love and
mercy.

These acts of love
and mercy, which engender hope and spread the knowledge of Jesus’ Lordship,
make possible the rooting and working of faith and subsequent belief through
the proclamation of the Gospel, as they are the natural attendants of that
proclamation. These acts are performed through the sharing of the life of
the age to come (Resurrection power) by God through the Spirit, in the ongoing
evidential manifestation of the covenant faithfulness of that creative,
providential, and covenant God, as He works through the beings that He created
in His image to bless all peoples and continue to establish His Kingdom on
earth. These efforts, however, as noble and proper and restorative in the
service of creation they may be, will not be without opposition. The
power of darkness will rage against the coming of the light, as God’s covenant
people seek to fulfill their covenantal duty to be a light to the
nations. Nevertheless, God instructs His people to “let not your hands
grow weak” (3:16b).

Why should the people
of the covenant, the people of the Gospel’s confession, not let their hands
grow weak---not grow weary in well doing? Quite simply, because “The Lord
your God is in your midst, a mighty One Who will save.” Israel’s God Who
created all things, Who holds the world in His hands, Who enters in to lift us
up from the bonds of death so as to engage us as His ambassadors and royal
emissaries in His covenant plans, is in our midst, gifting us with the
privilege of sharing in His plans and purpose and demonstrating the might of
His salvation as it touches the whole of the creation. What greater
reason do we need?

He will save.
What does that mean? The prophet writes, “He will rejoice over you with
gladness; He will quiet you by His love; He will exult over you with loud
singing” (3:17b). The Lord our God, the King, Who is the giver of all
things, will rejoice over His people. In that rejoicing, He will give the
gift of His gladness so as to make us glad, but only in and through Him and
through our faithful service according to His covenant. When His wrath is
deserved because we stand outside His covenant, and through our daily actions
of rebellion against what it is that God intended for the creatures of His
image, actually serve to bring further corruption into this world that God
created for His good, stand in enmity against Him, God demonstrates His love
for us through Christ dying for us (Romans 5:8). Should this not make us
stand in dumbstruck bewilderment, quieted by His love? Not only does He
exult over the covenant people that He is restoring and delivering from the
exile of the effects of faithlessness and rebellion, doing so with singing, but
He allows us to see the evidences of the working of His Spirit, when selfless
acts of love and mercy are performed as if being performed for the King, so as
to make it possible for us to exult in Him with a spirit of praise and
thanksgiving and celebration of Him and of His faithful working.

When were these
things accomplished? Ultimately, Israel had to look forward to see them
accomplished in the One Who was to be their King, their deliverer, who we
recognize as Jesus the Messiah. Today, we look back and acknowledge this
to be so. When Jesus began to reign, with this reign begun through His
work on the cross and sealed by His Resurrection, the Creator God said to His
people, I have “cleared away your enemies” (3:15b). Because the Christ
reigned victorious over the enemies of mankind and the creation, and because
mankind and the creation reigns victorious over those same enemies through espousal
of belief in Him and its attendant allegiance to His ways, then it is true that
His people need “never again fear evil” (3:15d). At the cross, our God
said “I will deal with all your oppressors” (3:19b), and so He did.

In His work of
restoration through Christ and the people of the Christ, God fulfills His
promise to “save the lame and gather the outcast” (3:19c), creating a kingdom
and a people for service to Him. God promised to “change their shame,”
the shame of their corruption of rebellion, “into praise and renown in all the
earth” (3:19d), thereby giving Himself the vehicle in and through which He
fulfills His covenant to bless those who bless His people and to curse those
who curse His people; and above all, to empower His people, as ambassadors and
royal emissaries, to be the people by which all the world is blessed.

Because of the cross
and the empty grave, we know that God has fulfilled His promise that “At that
time I will bring you in, at the time when I gather you together,” doing this
to make His people, and Himself by extension, “renowned and praised among all
the people of the earth” (3:20a). This renown and praise is as a result
of what God has done when He faithfully worked to “restore your fortunes before
your eyes” (3:20b), creating a people, through the renewal of the eternal life
(the life of the age to come) of union with Christ (confession of Jesus as Lord
and participation in His body the church), that are and will be everything that
God desired those that He created in His image to be.